Good reviews of the Hypnos releases. Though this guy's reviews seem almost always compelled to insert that annoying tagline "this release is nothing new under the sun" as if every single release should be an avant garde breakthrough, covering some kind of mythical, unobtainable new ground. Is it still possible to be new in this saturated musical world? Silly. And judging from what I've heard of his music, I don't want to hear that new ground broken.

You are right on there, 9 Dragons. I've seen plenty of his "dismissive" reviews, and he often manages to insult the artist somehow with a "nothing new under the sun" or "simple/typical drone" comment. Funny enough, his own music (at least what I've heard) is godawful and he'd never achieve what some of these artists already have. And you know what they say about critics being "frustrated artists"...

Each to their own taste in music and reviews.....it could have been worse, he could have slagged the music off, which I have seen in reviews and dislike intensely - I have reviewed in the past and prefer to say nothing if I did not like or enjoy the music I was sent.

I don't mind if the reviewer didn't like it, in fact I'd rather they be honest and say why. But I can't stand it in some of these Vital Weekly reviews this whole "oh yeah he just put a bunch of guitars through reverb, nothing new under the sun, been done before" as if he knows exactly how a piece was recorded. VW's review of the Mystery Sea release "Aningan" by Moljebka Pvlse is a case in point. It was such an insult to read, and I disagree 100% with the review. But Daniel at MS still posted it on his website.

I'm not a big fan of FDW, but I think it's commendable that he reviews everything that is sent to him. That said, I doubt that he listens to a given release more than once and probably types his review as he is listening to it.

Reviewing huge amounts of music, and not having enought time to get to know a release before reviewing sounds detrimental, especially in case of ambient/dronish stuff. Small, subtle things in the structure of the album can make a huge difference and at least I tend to miss a lot of those details on the first listen. Then again, it's difficult to say when you've listened to something enough to feel that your opinion is a well founded one...

I'd personally like to see more critical reviews of ambient/experimental electronic/etc. since, thanks to modern technology, there's dozens of albums released every week if we're counting all the netlabels/web releases as well. Not every piece of music is a good one and it might benefit the artist as well to know why some listeners don't enjoy their release. Very often all you (or, at least I) see is positive reviews or reviews that are really politely trying to evade saying anything actually critical.

Saying that a particular album is, for example, "nothing new under the sun" is of course all too easy but in some cases there's actual grounds for demanding something novel. That doesn't have to mean reinventing the whole genre but there's just so much ambient that sounds unambitious, and plain nice at best, and it feels there's nothing more to it. If this is what a reviewer feels like after giving the album enough time, I think that's what she should write, then. (This is not meant as a comment on this particular FDW case but just picking up from here...)

I agree with you Kaarinen. A lot of the previews/sound samples I hear (with more frequency nowadays) are pretty uninspiring at best. You can hear the influences there, but there's NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN! Geez, maybe that' not such a bad phrase after all...The most recent example comes to mind is the upcoming Infraction disc, I forget the name but it's a Japanese artist. Disappointing preview.